Petraeus’s COIN Gets Flipped

The general's counterinsurgency doctrine is as disgraced as he is.

During the course of the developing scandal involving former CIA Director David Petraeus, his biographer Paula Broadwell, Gen. John Allen, and Tampa social planner Jill Kelley, one journalist on Twitter, Max Fisher, commented that he was “having a tough time understanding why Petraeus’s scandal means that counterinsurgency doesn’t work.”

To which a prominent think tanker who spent much time in the field advising the former Gen. Stanley McChrystal on his counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy, Andrew Exum, added, “the scandal quickly became an excuse for everyone to grind their favored policy-related axes: Iraq, Afghanistan, COIN, drones…” Another national-security writer, Peter Munson, responded almost immediately: “while not germane to validity of COIN, I do think the scandal has much to say about national security dysfunction writ large.”

Exactly — while the sex scandal and whatever else may come out of this hot mess may not be “germane” to whether COIN worked in Afghanistan (the prevailing viewtoday is that it did not), this is an opportunity to talk frankly about counterinsurgency. Now dethroned, Petraeus and his war policy are fair game.

“First, even if Petraeus eventually gets somewhat rehabilitated and doesn’t disappear from public life, these events will puncture the image of a superhuman general that he has carefully cultivated over the years,” writes Stephen Walt, a longtime critic of the Bush and Obama foreign policies. “More importantly, this embarrassing personal failure will open the door to a more toughminded and dispassionate look at his actual record in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as his brief tenure as CIA head.”

Michael Hastings, the Rolling Stone reporter largely responsible for General McChrystal’s firing from his post as commander of U.S. Forces in Afghanistan, was quick to trigger such a conversation last week. As a former embed in Iraq, Hastings has criticized how the cult of Petraeus was used to sell the Surge and counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. He recalled how Petraeus became the greatest of all “celebrity generals,” not by winning wars, but by cultivating compliant journalists who gave him glowing coverage in the press. As a result, the counter-narrative — that the tide had started turning against the insurgents in Iraq before the “Surge” in 2007, that COIN was failing in Afghanistan, and that the Taliban was not losing traction — was conveniently lost in the din of hero-worship and runaway military idolatry (see Ret. Col. Doug Macgregor’s “Epitaph for a Four Star”). Writes Hastings:

The fraud that General David Petraeus perpetrated on America started many years before the general seduced Paula Broadwell … More so than any other leading military figure, Petraeus’ entire philosophy has been based on hiding the truth, on deception, on building a false image. “Perception” is key, he wrote in his 1987 Princeton dissertation: “What policymakers believe to have taken place in any particular case is what matters — more than what actually occurred.”

Yes, it’s not what actually happens that matters — it’s what you can convince the public it thinks happened. Until this weekend, Petraeus had been incredibly successful in making the public think he was a man of great integrity and honor, among other things.

Wired‘sSpencer Ackerman, who has a sound reputation as a thoughtful and fair national security writer, came forward and actually confessed he had fallen under the Petraeus spell as a war correspondent and analyst. In an admirable fit of journalistic honesty, Ackerman explained:

To be clear, none of this was the old quid-pro-quo of access for positive coverage. It worked more subtly than that: the more I interacted with his staff, the more persuasive their points seemed. Nor did I write anything I didn’t believe or couldn’t back up — but in retrospect, I was insufficiently critical … Another irony that Petraeus’ downfall reveals is that some of us who egotistically thought our coverage of Petraeus and counterinsurgency was so sophisticated were perpetuating myths without fully realizing it.

And the floodgates of mainstream criticism opened last week, some remarks taking on an almost funereal tone: “The disgrace of David Petraeus has ended more than a great military career. It is also the symbolic end of a major chapter in American security strategy,” wrote Time‘s Michael Crowley. “The fall of the former Iraq and Afghanistan commander adds a tawdry exclamation point to the decline of counterinsurgency, the military theory for which Petraeus offered a heroic public face.”

Crowley explained that “even before he was sworn in as CIA director in September 2011, Petraeus was bending the rules of his own doctrine in Afghanistan,” relying more on air strikes and night raids than the hearts-and-minds, “all of government” exercises he had touted back in 2009. “By the end of his career — in a country exhausted by war and slashing its budget — Petraeus had embraced that shift,” Crowley continued. “He had lowered his profile too far to become the drone war’s public face. But to those watching closely, the Petraeus Doctrine had morphed into something different. Counterinsurgency was finished. Much like the general’s career.”

Petraeus rolled the younger commander in chief into going ahead with a bound-to-fail surge in Afghanistan, just as, half a century earlier, the C.I.A. had rolled Jack Kennedy into going ahead with the bound-to-fail Bay of Pigs scheme. Both missions defied logic, but the untested presidents put aside their own doubts and instincts, caving to experience. Once in Afghanistan, Petraeus welcomed prominent conservative hawks from Washington think tanks. As Greg Jaffe wrote in The Washington Post, they were “given permanent office space at his headquarters and access to military aircraft to tour the battlefield. They provided advice to field commanders that sometimes conflicted with orders the commanders were getting from their immediate bosses.”

So many more American kids and Afghanistan civilians were killed and maimed in a war that went on too long. That’s the real scandal.

Jed Babbin, former George H.W Bush defense official and writer for The American Spectator, joined a chorus of writers on both sides of the political spectrum who now dismiss the “success” in Iraq as though this has come to be the conventional wisdom. How times have changed! Notes Babbin:

Petraeus leaves as an historic figure whose legacy is not as bright as many people say. His counterinsurgency strategy didn’t defeat the enemy in Iraq or Afghanistan. It merely propped up tinfoil regimes that will either turn to be our enemies — as in Iraq — or will fall quickly and be replaced with enemies we’d fought before, as in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, hardline neoconservatives who never quite warmed to post-Bush humanitarian interventionism are turning on their hero at last. While Diana West is hardly the best messenger, her complaints about how COIN’s “population centric” dictum did not translate well for the complexities of the Afghan battlefield are nevertheless widely shared in the military community.

COIN doctrine approaches war from an ivory tower, a place where such theories thrive untested and without hurting anyone. On the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, however, the results have been catastrophic. Tens of thousands of young Americans answered their country’s call and were told to accept more “risk” and less “protection.” Many lost lives, limbs and pieces of their brains as a result of serving under a military command structure and government in thrall to a leftist ideology that argues, in defiance of human history, that cultures, beliefs and peoples are all the same, or want to be.

West’s Islamophobia, as usual, gets in the way of a cogent argument (amputations due to IEDs, including the newer “dismounted complex blast injuries,” had risen in 2011, even while Petraeus was testifying to the contrary). But there is no denying that what seemed like an attempt by Clinton-era Democrats (Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice, Samantha Powers, et al) to join forces with Petraeus to carry out a kinder, gentler war, had backfired, badly, and the warhawks-turned-vultures, perched and eager to pick the bones of this thing, know it.

What, then, did Gen. Petraeus accomplish that deserves admission to the pantheon of military heroes? The answer is clear: He saved America from an appalling disgrace—the bloody disintegration of Iraq. … His legacy is twofold. As a general, he won a war. As a man, he took responsibility. In his common humanity and his exceptional dedication to his ideals, he showed nobility.

Funny, West spent most of last year criticizing COIN in Afghanistan as a futile nation-building exercise that put U.S. troops in harm’s way. He skims over this quickly in his Petraeus encomium, claiming that it “wasn’t his fault.”

Nonetheless, no one thought there would be this much conversation about COIN and Afghanistan after the election and this is a good thing. Too bad it had to happen under such salacious circumstances.

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20 Responses to Petraeus’s COIN Gets Flipped

The Coindinista’s resident at CNAS- Exum, Nagl, Barno, Ricks and Kilcullen- deserve to be publicly embarrassed for the hubris they displayed in selling Petraeus and COIN. It could never work because of three obvious facts- people don’t like being told what to do by armed foreigners and all societies contain enough “hostiles” to keep a war going, the west has limited endurance for fighting guerrilla wars which the guerrillas are counting on, and western governments organizational culture isn’t suited to long term difficult projects.

A study of the insurgencies in Dutch East Indies, Palestine, Indo-China, Viet-Nam, Kenya, Cyprus, Aden, Mozambique, Angola, Namibia, Rhodesia, Iraq and Soviet Afghanistan should have been a strong indication that armed nation building is a fool’s errand.

General Petraeus “saved the US from an appalling disgrace in Iraq” (as claimed by Max Boot, John McCain et al.)? Wrong. Petraeus helped the neocons defeat adoption of the sensible plan put forward by the Iraq Study Group, and cost the US well over $1 trillion, minimum.

Well that explains why we’re all so involved with this ‘affair’. Beats my fear of this being another morality situation.

I imagine, though, that COIN was a hope that we hadn’t fallen into yet another situation of a failed war. By the time it was proposed, we were already well into Iraq and Afganistan, and no one wanted to lose either war.

With this being dubbed a failure, though, we’re left with a very ugly realization: military action does not work. If attacking and defeating a nation does nothing except create a failed campaign, then it means there’s no gain for actively attacking said nation.

This puts an ugly spin on Iran. If Iran cannot be stopped by diplomatic means, will that mean we will be sending troops into yet another decade long failed campaign? Or will we turn to ‘burn and run’ tactics, which is about as effective, though at least a little cheaper?

If we really can’t ‘win’ a war, what exactly can we do with the military we have?

I doubt General Patreaus is responsible for the issues in either Afgahnistan or Iraq. He was handed two extremely difficult tasks – perhaps impossible. The foundations of those excursion were sand. Sand is a shifting beast upon which any number of mishaps could sink or shatter a foundation. Not even the Iraq study groups solutions can mend a military excursion for which there was no moral or military mandate given the organizational, cultural miscalculations.

There has only been one mechanism that has led to successful nation building and that is it’s near complete annihilation making the population so dependent on invading forces that they have no option but to tranform their political infrastructure, to include a long and sustained occupation.

I think history demostrates anything short of that is an exercise in knee ‘jerk futility.’The surge was successful only as long as it was sustained. There in lies the problem surges are spurts not designed to be sustained pressure.

“With this being dubbed a failure, though, we’re left with a very ugly realization: military action does not work.” This is wrong!

“There has only been one mechanism that has led to successful nation building and that is it’s near complete annihilation making the population so dependent on invading forces that they have no option but to tranform
their political infrastructure, to include a long and sustained
occupation.” This is correct!

I never understood that the Petraeus strategy was to turn the Iraq and Afghanistran situations in our favor, but rather to give inevitable defeat a happy face. The only ones who ever hailed his efforts in either country as a success have the been the warmongers who wanted the war to continue for its own sake, regardless of results. So I really have no bone to pick with him about pursuing the wrong strategy. Given that he was given a task impossible of fulfillment (if the task indeed was to ensure the triumph of two pro-American regimes), there is no basis to complain about him playing his role in this scripted drama.

If “victory” is the only satisfactory outcome there is only one way to achieve it – drive out or exterminate the native population who are hostile to our ends and replace them with new settlers who will be allied with us out their own necessity. This has been the traditional prescription for national conquest from time immemorial, and it is a ruthless and bloody one. It is also an inadmissible prescription in the post-World War II West, which puts a premium on “human rights” as an objective of national policy. Hence, it was never possible to achieve U.S. objectives in Iraq, Afghanistan, or any other country or territory dominated by Muslim majorities hostile to those objectives, by military force. We never should have tried, not even in response to the attacks on 9/11/2001. In fact, we should have taken the experience of that fateful day to reexamine the question of whether control of events in the Middle East should be an objective of U.S. foreign policy in the first place, or whether the whole region should be considered a “bridge too far” for us to expend our blood and treasure, and something that should be left for other regional powers to contend for. There is enough of the rest of the world for the U.S. to contend for, say the Western Hemisphere and the Pacific Ocean base and rim, that is reasonably achievable, far less costly to pursue, and more than enough for any respectable imperialists to contend for.

I think an important thing to remember is that while COIN definately has its flaws, many of which may be fatal, it is not as if we have ever fully commited to it. How we choose, train, equip, organize and deploy our troops are not even very COIN friendly it would seem. You can’t be stuck in an attrition warfare mindset and end up winning hearts and minds, not that you ever could win hearts and minds that are having thier future dictated to them from half a world away. For us to have adopted a COIN strategy we would have to have a strategic foreign policy and a military culture that valued outcomes as much as it does super weapons, press releases and job security.

Having served in the military during Vietnam, I’ve never idolized career military people since then. They have a job to do and with great power comes great temptation. Regarding Iraq, I think military leadership as well as many others in high echelon understood the dangers of an insurgency war, ( a Vietnam bog-down), before the invasion of Iraq took place. They just didn’t believe it would take place. Now we know. The lesson is: “The masses cannot be controlled if they don’t want to be controlled”. At least not by any method we would care to use.

After civilian administrators and military general, after general, failed to pacify the Iraqis, all leaving with their tail between their legs and careers cut short, Petraeus must have seen the writing on the wall when he got the call. He must have simply played people and events to the best career outcome he could manage knowing he could never succeed at winning this insurgency for what the American public might consider a “win”. I can’t blame him for that. Indeed they are still at it over there. Probably never stop killing each other. It’s not his job, nor his prerogative to go to the American people with “the truth” above elected representatives of the people. He just obeys orders and that is why we should allow him and the others a degree of respect. What do you do when you’re given a crap sandwich? You eat that sucker the best way you know how and push on. As for Petraeus “seducing” Paula Broadwell; it takes two to tango. Nobody was seduced that didn’t want to be seduced.

Having given Petraeus a pass here, I still don’t want him as a presidential candidate in 2016. Let him run for Senator of Kentucky or something first.

” His legacy is twofold. As a general, he won a war. As a man, he took responsibility. In his common humanity and his exceptional dedication to his ideals, he showed nobility.”

Meantime, back on the physical and moral planet that the rest of us inhabit, “as a general” Petraeus presided over two of the most stupendously wasteful, inept and corrupt military occupations in human history. “As a man” his behavior as CIA Director went well beyond gross irresponsibility to something bordering on mental instability. “Nobility”? Don’t make me retch.

Sep 12, 2007
Petraeus v. Fallon
In January, President Bush replaced Abizaid and Casey, who were “surge” skeptics, with Adm. William Fallon and Gen. David Petraeus. This week, Petraeus — in the first public hearings since taking on his new role — delivered his Iraq assessment to great media fanfare. But where was his boss, Admiral Fallon? Inter-Press Service suggests animosity between the two might be one reason for Fallon’s absence:
Fallon told Petraeus [in March] that he considered him to be “an ass-kissing little chickensh*t” and added, “I hate people like that”, the sources say. That remark reportedly came after Petraeus began the meeting by making remarks that Fallon interpreted as trying to ingratiate himself with a superior.

You would think anyone with an interest in history would have known Bush’s wars were lost when they began. The American revolution is a good example. A dislike of a foreign occupier, British, A place of refuge, Valley Forge with a modern metal forge, and the forests to the west of the colonies, a powerful friend/ ally, France, to supply arms, and at Yorktown the French navy, and French army as an ally in battle.
Recipe for success: hate foreign occupier, have weapons, have a safe refuge to rearm and recruit. Vietnam also comes to mind. Iraq was to large for U.S. to occupy, Pakistan is refuge for Taliban.
I think Petraeus may have been smart enough to figure this out so he spent most of his time on PR.

General Petraeus’s first brown-nosed his way into the national spotlight as a major general.

Petraeus headed the Iraq Security Transition Command Jun 2004–Sep 2005. After he had been in charge of training the Iraqi Army for three months, he famously wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post which was published in September 2004.

During a crucial time in the presidential campaign, when Kerry said Iraq was headed south, Petraeus’s piece was a rosy prediction of things to come. “Six battalions of the Iraqi regular army and the Iraqi Intervention Force are now conducting operations. . .Within the next 60 days, six more regular army and six additional Intervention Force battalions will become operational. . . Nine more regular army battalions will complete training in January”

Nope.

Sep 2005, a year later –Gen. George W. Casey Jr., who oversees U.S. forces in Iraq, said there are fewer Iraqi battalions at “Level 1 readiness than there were a few months ago. . . The number of Iraqi army battalions that can fight insurgents without U.S. and coalition help has dropped from three to one, top U.S. generals told Congress yesterday.

From 21 battalions to one. Quite a drop.

Of course Petraeus bettered Casey when he later replaced Casey and then moved up another notch to CENTCOM and then ISAF, proving that truth has no relevance in warfare, and may even be detrimental. Now Casey has had the last laugh.

Petraeus was an invention of Bush, Cheney, the neo-cons, and a complicit press. He was a comic book character, a cartoon that attempted to salvage and enhance reputations by convincing the American public that their was wisdom in what has rightfully been labeled the worst military blunder in American history. He was the public face of a disasterous foreign policy, so they dressed him up in his Superman costume, while wiser gnererals who advised against the wars were sacked.

As in Vietnam, so too in Iraq and Afghanistan. “We lost the day we started and we win the day we stop.” “You can’t do a wrong thing the right way,” but with COIN — Colonial Occupation of the Indigenous Natives — you can always do it even worse.

Back in 1969, during my eleven weeks of Counter Insurgency School at Coronado Island, San Diego, our instructors told us about that “win their hearts and minds” thing. Then they translated the academic slogan into the practical military policy that we would actually carry out during our deployment to South Vietnam: “Grab ’em by the balls and their hearts and minds will follow.”

General Dave did not invent COIN, nor did he ever seem to know much about its many disastrous failures — especially when half-heartedly embraced by a conventional American military that never believed in it for a moment. He just thought he could sell the discredited idea to his political boosters in Washington, DC in lieu of actually concluding — i.e., “finishing” — the Iraq and Afghan debacles and leading our vaunted Visigoths back home for a celebratory parade.

Another Catastrophic Success

With their tails tucked proudly ‘tween their legs
Advancing towards the exits march the dregs
Of empire, whose retreat this question begs:
No promised omelet, just the broken eggs?